Fabric, design, quilting and all manner of craftiness

Yellow Grape-Tomato Baked Bruschetta

This is a wood sculpture at the entrance of Murray Park, of Chief Wasatch. He is who the Wasatch Mountains are named after. He is magnificent-looking.

OK, another foodie blog tonight. I was planning to spend Saturday morning reading in luxury… ahh… Saturdays are heaven. But before I got started on the reading, I checked my email and saw that some new people had found my blog after I posted the last one about the “Caprese Broil”… So I had to go check out their blogs, and someone mentioned their local farmer’s market. Hmmmm… got me thinking.

I had bought some more tomatoes the night before, to try out some more versions of my tomato basil concoction; but they weren’t really ripe enough yet. So when I read about the Farmer’s Market, I thought, maybe I could find some really fun and unusual tomatoes… stuff I never see at the grocery store here.

So, I threw some clothes on and brushed my hair into a clip, and off I went on a little adventure to Murray Park. It’s such a nice park, and I hadn’t been there in years. It’s really green, and Little Cottonwood Creek runs through it. I’ll have to get my family to have a picnic there sometime soon. It was so great to get out of the house and enjoy the outdoors!

The Farmer’s Market is in the south east parking lot. To the south there are big grassy hills, and to the east you can see the Wasatch Mountains in the distance. There were probably about 30 or 40 booths. The selection is pretty basic—tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, peppers, peaches, pears, grapes, berries, etc. Ooo, and a booth with amazing tamales. I stood in line for 20 minutes for those! But I didn’t find the exotic heirlooms I was looking for. However, there were some baby grape-sized yellow tomatoes, and some small golf ball-sized orange ones. So I went home with those and some baby romas.

Here are the pictures I took at the Market:

So, I didn’t ever get my reading in, but Saturday night I made a tasty “Caprese Bake” with the tiny round yellow tomatoes. It turned out sooooo yummy. (I failed to get pictures of my tomatoes before cooking them! Ack! Blog Fail. But… keep reading. I did get pictures of the after-baked version.)

Here’s the “recipe” (quotes, because I don’t have amounts, sorry… I was just drizzling here and throwing in there…):

I cut the tiny tomatoes in half, and covered the bottom of a small casserole dish. Then I generously drizzled olive oil, white balsamic vinegar (my favorite Alessi brand), chopped up mozzarella, and chopped basil. I stirred it all up then baked it for almost an hour at 375 F. Then I toasted some yummy walnut bread that I bought at the Farmers Market, and drizzled it with olive oil, and rubbed garlic on it. Then, even though it was so pretty right out of the pan (see the first picture below), I stirred it up, which made the cheesy juice and the cooked-down white balsamic all come together and made a baked bruschetta-like pasty mixture. Once I got the stirred mixture just right, I spooned it onto the toast, and topped with some grated parmesan. THEN, the thing that puts it over the top, is drizzling it with reduced balsamic vinegar (regular dark balsamic this time.) Oh my gosh, it was perfect.

(To make the reduced dark balsamic vinegar, I put almost a cup of regular balsamic vinegar in a pan, and boiled/simmered it until it was about 1/4-1/3 cup. It only took about 10 minutes) I just drizzled a little over the toast and tomatoes. Mmmmm, mmmmmm. Heaven on toast.

Let me know if you try making this, and how it turned out. I made it again tonight at my Sister’s house, with the golf ball-sized orange tomatoes. It was just as yummy!

I’ll have to go perusing my new blog-friends’ sites to find new food combos to get obsessed about. Well, once all my tomatoes and basil are gone.

Who is Karen di Bee?

My name is Karen Brimhall, and "Karen di Bee" was my Dad's funny way of saying "Karen B." when I was a kid. He'd kind of add the "d" sound in between... I am all about fabric, color, creativity, textiles, beads, paper, friends, family, my dog Elsie, and dark chocolate.